Groundwork Toolkit: developing a research function in a non-profit organization


Recommendations for thinking through and developing a research function
An MIT team shares their thoughts after their experience with a non-profit organization in South Africa

Following the completion of their Global Health Delivery Lab (ghdLAB) projects in Africa and India, we asked our MIT student teams to reflect on their ghdLAB project experience and share what they learned – insights, a how-to guide, best practice tips  – in ways that can be used by others undertaking similar work or facing similar issues in global health. We share their thoughts under the ‘management for the world’ (mftw) collection in the hopes that others will build on it in keeping with the creative commons license.

Bo Young Han, Katherine A Krontiris, Megan Christine Wilbur, Ryohei Takao

Our Management for the World Module describes how to develop research function in non-profit organizations in the global health field. Based on our consulting experience to a non-profit organization in South Africa, we propose the thought process to start discussions on research function development and the practical tips to successfully complete it. The thought process consists of four steps and we suggest the key issues and solution approaches in each step. The practical tips include two aspects; common pitfalls and useful information sources. We hope this document could contribute to facilitate discussions on research function development in non-profit organizations with valuable experiences and assets.

Download How to develop a research function (pdf).

Was this article useful to you? Please give us feedback on how to improve sharing our work by leaving us a comment or e-mailing us at ghd.projects.lab@mit.edu.

Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.



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